To Be King Hamlet
by Dantriestobeproductive
Summary: There's not much to say about the Proto-Portal Incident, except that it ruined his life, took Maddie away from him and that it's all Jack's fault. And now he's dying. Trans!Vlad.


I kinda wanted to continue it, but it felt right to finish it where I did. Hmm...Anyway, there you go!

* * *

><p>When he wakes up to a world where he's dying, his best friend and the love of his life are dating and both have forgotten him and left him alone, he's angry.<p>

Angry at Jack's treason, angry at their lack of visits, angry at the machine that was going to be their ticket to fame and a new world but instead has written him a death date, angry at the doctors that can't do a thing to make the radiation in his bones recede or make it _stop hurting_ _so much_ at the very least, angry at the pitying looks and whispers behind his back and the grimaces of disgust and angry _at the reflection on the mirror_.

The last one is so familiar it hurts the most, but they don't let him wear his binder (_Maddie's Christmas present, the present he wanted to be wearing when he asked her out_), even when he tries to explain that _if he's going to die, he wants to be comfortable at the very least._

And they keep using the wrong pronouns. Every. Single. Time.

It makes him miss Jack and Maddie all the more, and this makes him even angrier.

He's going to die, and all he can feel is that nothing is going to be okay, along with the old familiar feeling that he's _wrong and broken and completely __unlikable_. That hurts more than the burning pain in his face does, makes him more uncomfortable in his own skin than the feeling of crawling bugs under the flesh of his face when they give him painkillers.

And it makes him the angriest.

He realizes one month after that it's all Jack's fault (_that's not, that's not it, there's something about beating up some bullies and even standing up to a teacher who kept calling him Vladimira, but he's _tired_ and _angry_ and his mind keeps replaying the accident, slowly repainting it with his rage_).

It was Jack who'd had the idea of the portal. It was Jack who'd convinced them it was a good idea.

It was Jack who'd pulled the level.

Jack who'd pulled Maddie away from him.

Jack. Jack. Jack.

He realizes he hates that name the most, and it makes the other pains hurt less.

It's all his fault, after all.

(And he wants revenge he wants to destroy him take Maddie back and away from that oaftoostupidtolivetooclumsytodoathingwelltooneedytootactiletoodumbtootrustingofeveryone.)

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

His heart stops one day, and he's there to see it.

It's almost peaceful, ironically enough. With the radiation tainting his blood and organs and bones (a faint pickle of worry had passed through his mind at hearing the prognosis, the thought of biological offspring a fleeting one. He'd been hoping, wanting to put hormones off for a later date if it meant-), there's not much to do but leave him isolated to die between four white walls. He lays quietly, too tired and too burned out to scream or even wince at the excruciating pain anymore, and his skin feels too tight and too dry, as if it was going to tear open with a breeze or a movement.

But he's too weak to even breathe, and the tube giving him easy oxygen becomes useless as his heart gives out with a last trembling stutter. His open eyes look at the ceiling.

He's alone when he dies.

And suddenly, he's in front of the bed, and the sign of his defeated, deformed body is such a horror show to see that he feels sick, his face contorting into one of disgust. Then he realizes it's himself, and disgust gives way to horror, fear and confusion.

He's dead, but he's there.

He's a ghost.

He runs (_floats_) to a mirror, and the reflection in it is pale, drawn, an almost bluish tint to his skin, but _himself_, in ways he wasn't even in his rightful body. He's shocked to note the flatness in his chest and, when he puts his hands against it, there's no contained amounts of flesh. Just flat skin, drawing the form of a male chest. Of his chest.

And it's weird, because he doesn't need air, but he feels like he's choking, and he doubles over, a painful pang in his chest pulling and _pushing_.

Everything goes black-

And when he comes to himself, he's back in the bed, still feeling light and _better_ than he's ever felt since he was a child.

Huh.

He gets up, wary about his weak body, and he doesn't manage to get to his feet, but that's quickly forgotten when_ his right feet sinks inside the bed to his knee_.

The last time he'd shrieked like that he was seven and his mother had gotten him his first book, an old hands-me-down collection of ghost stories he'd absolutely _adored_.

If it isn't bizarre enough to see one of your appendages sinking into a solid object, the long-forgotten memory surely tilts his vision a thirty degree angle and- no, he _is_ actually tilting...

His hand is sinking through the bed too.

He pulls away, folding his arms and legs around himself as best as he can, crawling away from the empty place left where his appendages had just sunk.

Appendages, he realizes numbly, that now tingle as if in memory of the realness of the impossible act.

Unless he-

Unless he...

He takes a deep, trembling breath, and the ache between his ribs that this simple action produces is too _much_.

He cries for the first time since he turned eleven, long before he was rejected by his own family for his identity, longer before he was left alone to die in a hospital room by his best friends.

Vlad Masters cries himself undone, trembling head to toe, gasping for air and being pulled in and out of a crying fit after another, long minutes of exhausted inertia in between.

When he falls asleep, or maybe unconscious, fresh streams of tears are still falling down his face.

Even then, on an unconscious level, he knows he's different now, even more than before, and the sheer crush of loneliness opens another dam of tears, and a hole in his chest settles, silent.

And waits.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

He doesn't get worse, but he doesn't get better.

The nightmares start.


End file.
